Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Kaethe Weingarten
Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D. 1 Harvard Medical School, The Family Institute of Cambridge.
"This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is
not the copy of record."
those whose families have suffered political violence in the past are particularly vulnerable to
be familiar with the mechanisms by which children are exposed to the effects of political violence
suffered by their elders-that is, the ways in which they become their witnesses. This article
presents a framework for understanding how the trauma of political violence experienced in one
generation can “pass” to another that did not directly experience it, and proposes a model to
her knees. Tears sliding down her cheeks, the mother clings to her soldier husband who is about
to board a ship/a plane, heading off to a foreign land—the Persian Gulf/Afghanistan/the Balkans.
There are no boundaries to the intimate reach of political violence. What happens in one
part of the world reaches the bodies and minds of peoples in other parts of the world. A war in
Europe or the Middle East shows up years later in the cells of American youngsters as surely as
This is no mere metaphor. At continued peril to all, we obscure the fact that traces of
distant past political conflicts surface in current situations at home. Residues of the Vietnam War
can be found in a family fight this month in Omaha, Nebraska. The 80-year-old World War II
veteran who marches in the 2003 Memorial Day parade, holding his teen-aged granddaughter’s
hand, transfers to her, whether he tells her or not, the import of his “seeing” images of his fallen
comrades. These are both examples of intergenerational transmission of trauma, a topic family
Curiously, although most therapists accept that they themselves are vulnerable to
unwanted effects when they hear about the suffering of those who have experienced trauma,
called “secondary traumatization” (Figley, 1995; Stamm, 1999; Yassen, 1995) and/or “vicarious
traumatization” (McCann & Pearlman,1990; Pearlmam & Saakvitne, 1995), they have been more
reluctant to accept that family members, whose exposure is constant, also feel the impact
(Auerhahn & Laub, 1998). In the family therapy field, this minimization of familial transmission
therapists using a transgenerational approach, assessing transmission of trauma is not among the
list of 77 items nominated by senior family therapy educators (Nelson, Heilbrun, & Figley,
1993).
experiences of trauma in one generation are “passed” to those in another in the hopes that
providing family therapists with this information will encourage them to incorporate this domain
of inquiry into their work with families.Although we typically imagine that transmission is
vertical in a downward direction, from parent to child, vertical transmission can also proceed in
an upward fashion, as has been described in South Africa during Apartheid, especially during the
1980 and early 90's, when politicized youth in townships created traumatized witnesses of their
parents who, rightly, feared for their safety (Simpson, 1998). Further, transmission in families
can also be horizontal, for example, from one spouse to another. This aspect will be elaborated
trauma” (Danieli, 1998a) refers to the belief that a family member who has experienced trauma
can “expose” another member to “residues” of that trauma, even though the exposed family
member does not directly experience that trauma. In this article, I am focusing on a subset of
Most therapists readily recognize that children are at risk if they are exposed to political
violence themselves. Similarly, most of us would agree that children are doubly at risk when
they are directly exposed to political violence and witness the effects of the same political
violence on their parents (e.g., Cairns & Lewis, 1999; Kinzie, Boehnlein, & Sack, 1998; Machel,
Salgado, Klot, Sowa, & UNICEF, 2001; Mollica, Poole, & Tor, 1998; Punamaeki, Quota, & El-
Sarraj, 2001; Reilly, 2002). Likewise, most therapists would recognize that the children of a
parent with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to political violence (e.g.,, the
In this article, I look at a situation that is often neglected or ignored, but one that is, in
fact, far more prevalent for children in the United States than any of the three aforementioned
scenarios. I refer to children’s exposure to the effects on their family members of political
violence that the children did not experience themselves. Understanding the mechanisms by
which children may be exposed to legacies of political violence can help us to make connections
between current distress and political issues that may be key to resolving presenting problems.
The antecedents of troubled times in families may reach back to political events that no one links
to today’s problems. Or contemporary political struggles in other parts of the globe may
stimulate memories of past conflict experienced by adults thatdisrupt2 their present functioning.
Finally, current political violence, such as the war in Iraq, may directly or indirectly affect
families we serve, linking to pain associated with past events or issues of loss.
As with many terms, the definition of political violence is contested. In this article,
political violence is identified by the intended purposes, not the scale of the destruction or the
horror. Based on Cairns (1996, p. 11), political violence is defined as “those acts of an inter-
group nature that are seen by those on both sides, or on one side, to constitute violent behavior
carried out in order to influence power relations between the two sets of participants.”
review the literature on witnessing. To start, we must think carefully about the context of
perpetrator. In fact, a considerable amount of violence has witnesses, whether at the moment of
the violent act or later (Gilligan, 1997). Although “victimization” yields over 6000 references in
a major electronic database, “witnessing violence” is not a subject heading (PsychInfo, 2003).
This is so despite the fact that prominent theoreticians have stated that, “Witnesses as well as
One problem faced by anyone who wishes to study the phenomenon of witnessing
violence is the fact that there are multiple definitions of what constitutes witnessing, among
which are categories such as seeing, hearing, or being used in a direct event of violence; viewing
it in the media; and subsequent knowledge of another’s victimization (Buka et al., 2001;
witnessing violence is a relatively new area of study, and there is still no consensus definition of
it, there are excellent reviews of empirical data on children’s witnessing community (Buka et al.,
2001) and domestic (Edleson, 1999; Groves, 2002; Hughes, 1988) violence. There is a growing
literature on child witnesses to political violence (Apfel & Simon, 1996; Cairns, 1996; Leavitt &
Fox, 1993), including armed conflict (Machel & UNICEF, 1996) and war (Jensen & Shaw, 1993;
Machel et al., 2001). A large literature also exists on child witnesses to parents who have
Historically, research into the effects of political violence on children began in the 1960s
when social scientists began to study the psychological effects of the Holocaust after a lull
during the 1950s that some Holocaust scholars liken to a “conspiracy of silence” (Danieli, 1984,
3
). Initial studies of clinical samples of Holocaust survivors and their children reported
adjustment accumulated in the 1970s, many scientists, some of whom were children of survivors
themselves, became concerned about the validity of the findings on methodological and
philosophical grounds. Significant concerns were raised about biased samples without
(Solkoff, 1992, p. 342). Solkoff (1992) suggested two new avenues of study: What is the
meaning and impact of any parental trauma on a child, and do parents confer strengths to
children because of their histories of traumatization? These two questions have subsequently
guided much of the work in the field (Kellerman, 2001) and informed the studies that will be
Those investigating in depth the experience of the witness have resisted simplification
victim/witness role are carefully elucidated (Felman & Laub, 1992; Langer, 1991; Laub, 1991).
A decade later, as if in dialogue with these earlier texts, authors scrupulously analyze the
responsibility of the witness who has not suffered what the victim has (Oliver, 2001; Sontag,
2003).
an ethical involvement. One must not only utter a truth about the victim but also
remain true to her or him. In this latter mode of response, one is summoned to
attentiveness, which is to say, to a heartfelt concern for and acknowledgment of
the gravity of violence directed toward particular others. In this attentiveness, the
wounding of the other is registered in the first place not as an objective fact but as
other who suffers is itself suffered. But this suffering is not one of empathy,
which is to say a suffering that would find in its own discomfort a comparison to
Although this passage has a great deal to teach us as therapists, in this article, it is the
application of this perspective to the dilemmas that arise for child witnesses to parental suffering
that is most relevant. What does it mean for a child to be “summoned to attentiveness,” to
register the parents’ “wounding” as a subjective blow? How does a child deal with the
“impossibility of suffering the other’s suffering?” It is not only the answers to these questions
that we should seek, but also the patience to explore them, the fortitude to learn from those who
live them, and the willingness to be changed as a consequence of our mutual inquiry.
Witness Positions
Using a two by two grid, four witness positions are created by the intersections of awareness and
empowerment. It makes a difference to the witness—and to the family, community and wider
society—whether one is aware or unaware of the meaning and significance of what one is
witnessing and also a difference depending on whether one feels empowered or not in relation to
what one witnesses. Crucially, witness positions can change (See Figure 1).
Witness Position 1 is the most desirable for people and constructive for others, for people
are aware—cognizant and mindful of the implications—and have an idea about how to take
effective action in relation to that which they observe. For example, a woman whose grandfather
survived the Armenian genocide stands with Women in Black in their weekly silent vigils to act
Witness Position 2 represents the most toxic condition for others, because people in this
position are unaware of the meaning and significance to the victim of what they are4 witnessing
but are empowered in relation to the situation. A person in this witness position is most likely to
do harm, where “do” refers to omissions as well as commissions. For example, in South Africa,
Hendrick Vorwoerd, the architect of Apartheid, called his policies of racial exclusion and
domination a “policy of good neighborliness” (Washington Post Online, 2003). This view was
in the 1950s and believed this was “better” for them, that is Witness Position 2. Those displaced
were enraged and economically, socially, and politically devastated by the removals.
In the United States, children are often exposed to their parents’ racist behavior. For
example, a child watches a parent chide the family’s Latina domestic worker for requesting a day
off to attend to problems with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, ultimately inducing
sufficient guilt for the woman to withdraw her request. The child, taking cues from the parent,
Witness Position 3 depicts a person who is unaware of the meaning and significance of
what she is witnessing and therefore does not—for she cannot—act in relation to that to which
she is exposed. Many daughters of World War II veterans describe not having known what their
fathers did during the war until after their deaths. It is only in retrospect that they are able to
account for their father’s moods and behaviors and its effects on their own lives (see Steinman,
2001). Many questions can be posed in relation to this position, among them, and crucially for
children who may be in Witness Position 3, how is one affected by that which one does not
consciously perceive? What are the consequences of becoming aware after the fact of that which
Witness Position 4 represents the position that people experience with the most evident
distress. People are aware of the meaning of what they are witnessing but feel helpless or
ineffective in relation to it. Children who know their parents have suffered trauma but feel
powerless to comfort them are in one of life’s most painful predicaments. Hackett (2001) poses
The thesis of this article is that children are witnesses to their parents’ trauma; the domain
of trauma that is the focus is that of political violence. Parents may be traumatized by political
violence in a number of ways, including, but not limited to, having lived through political
conflicts, war, genocide, internments, politically motivated tyranny, repressive regimes, colonial
rule and slavery; having served in the military, with peacekeeping forces, or humanitarian
organizations before, during or after times of conflict in foreign regions; having immigrated from
regions that subsequently erupted or threatened to erupt with political violence; having roots in
regions that experienced political violence in the past; fearing reprisals because of political
activity; and having experienced traumatic loss from natural causes such that all death and loss,
To provide some systematization to this vast, overlapping, confusing, and riveting area of
psychological, familial, and societal. Within each category, I have chosen one representative
mechanism and I have illustrated this mechanism with an example of political violence. No
mechanism alone is the answer to how trauma “passes” from one generation to the next; none is
incontrovertible; and none can be neatly separated from the others. But each is intriguing and
opens up ways of understanding how traumatic experience in one generation impacts another.
“Impacts” is truly the operative word, for what is passed is not the trauma itself, but its impact. If
one lives with a parent who has suffered from political trauma, one may acquire vulnerabilities
one might not otherwise have, but one also has opportunities to develop resilient coping skills
that one might not have had (Novac & Hubert-Schneider5, 1998).
The purpose of this overview is to encourage therapists to consider the likelihood that any
or all of these mechanisms may be operating for the individuals, couples and families with whom
they consult. Appreciating this offers opportunities for inquiry, reflection, understanding, and
change for those stuck in current struggles related to or aggravated by residues of political
violence that insinuate themselves into the bodies, minds, and spirits of those who were not
Biological Mechanisms
Bessel van der Kolk, a noted trauma researcher, has written extensively about the
biological and neurophysiologic aspects of trauma, referring memorably to the fact that “the
body keeps the score” (van der Kolk, 1996, 1999). In response to the intense interest in
understanding all aspects of trauma following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
Yehuda (2002) wrote a concise article in the New England Journal of Medicine providing data
supporting the hypothesis that “the development of PTSD is facilitated by a failure to contain the
biologic stress response at the time, resulting in a cascade of alterations that lead to intrusive
recollections of the event, avoidance of reminders of the event, and symptoms of hyperarousal”
(p. 111–112). In this article she posits cortisol as a candidate mechanism for such a cascade that
can account for both the development of trauma and its transmission across generations.
This article is part of a line of research that Yehuda and her colleagues have been
conducting for nearly two decades, focusing on the vicissitudes of cortisol in samples of Vietnam
veterans and survivors of the Holocaust, among other groups (e.g., Mason et al., 2001; Yehuda,
Halligan, & Bierer, 2002). In one study with Holocaust survivors and their adult children, the
research team found that offspring shared some similar psychological symptoms as their parents.
symptoms described by people who had lived through the Holocaust, both of which were
associated with lower than normal cortisol levels (Yehuda, Halligan, & Grossman, 2001).
These researchers found that the subset of adult children of Holocaust survivors whose
parents actually had PTSD reported significantly more emotional abuse than the other groups of
adult children to whom they were compared; they also had particularly low cortisol levels
(Yehuda et al., 2001.) In trying to understand how trauma is passed from one generation to the
next, these studies provide another clue. Children may develop vulnerability to PTSD if they
grow up in a home in which they are subject to emotional abuse, as those children who grew up
with parents who had PTSD related to the Holocaust often did. The vulnerability can be
ascertained by the biological marker of low cortisol levels (which may contribute to subsequent
cognitions about the world and the self that develop in the home and predispose children to
develop PTSD if exposed to a traumatic event (Foa, Ehlers, Clark, Tolin, & Orsillo, 1999). This
One question that follows from this research is whether there may be some survival value
for the species for parents to pass on to their children sensitivity to danger such that they may be
better prepared to face subsequent challenges (Novac & Hubert-Schneider, 1998; Suomi &
Levine, 1998). Openness to this perspective can check us from prematurely assuming that the
Psychological Mechanisms
difficult to make and may appear arbitrary. The criterion I have used is whether the mechanism
results in the pervasive diffusion of meaning (emotional tone, belief, theme) throughout the
Much empirical and clinical work has found attachment theory useful to account for
continuities and variations that develop between the mother and the infant in relation to signaling
distress (either within the infant, e.g., hunger; or in the environment, e.g,, a frightening noise or
strange person) and responding to the infant with protection, care, and comfort (Cassidy &
Shaver, 1999). Although much work has focused on maltreatment experienced by the caretaker,
often the mother, that can compromise her ability to provide consistent and predictable responses
to her infantWhile some cross-cultural psychologists challenge the premise that the theory
addresses universal dimensions of human attachment (Rothbaum et al, 1993 ), and feminists
challenge the theory's sensitivity to social context as a crucial influence on the attachment
system, especially over time ( Franzblau, 1999 ), no one debates the importance of
"attachments," that is loving relationships that provide protection, comfort, and security.
(Egeland & Susman-Stillman, 1996; Kaufman & Zigler, 1987; Zeanah & Zeanah, 1989), recent
work also investigates how “outside systems and conditions” (Lynch & Cicchetti, 2002, p. 519),
Researchers hypothesize that the attachment system suffers when the caretaker is a
resolution of loss or trauma” (Lyons-Ruth & Jacobvitz, 1999, p. 544) resulting in inconsistent
behavior with his or her children. It is highly likely that experiences of political violence also
means of coping with the lasting effects of political violence (Hardtmann, 1998; Rowland-Klein
& Dunlop, 1998; Weiss & Weiss, 2000). Projecting unacceptable feelings on to another is part of
ordinary social interaction. However, it becomes pathological when the projection is rigidly
maintained and when the person who is projected upon is unable to resistor challenge the
contents of what is projected. The contents may be distorted in the direction of good or evil. In
most instances the person projecting comes to control disowned feelings by manipulating the
person projected upon, whom he or she has nonverbally maneuvered into taking on the feeling.
Parents who have suffered from political violence may use projective identification for purposes
Pollack, 1995; Pollack, 1999), are particularly vulnerable to projecting fear during and in the
aftermath of political violence, a context in which fear is endemic (Grossman, 1996). One World
War II veteran consistently belittled his young son about his athletic prowess, shaming him on
the athletic fields in front of his friends. Later in life, when this man became ill with a disabling
disease, he confided in his son how terrified he had been of being humiliated by his superior
officer during his military service. He told his son that he had striven always to be perfect in an
In The Other Hand, a novel, Metzger (2000) hauntingly depicts a father’s use of
projective identification in an encounter with his son. A German soldier during World War I
briefly returns home from his duties to his family. He arrives during a snowstorm and his 10-
year-old son is startled both by his sudden appearance in their parlor and by the freezing blast of
cold air that assails him as his father’s enters. The boy cries out in apparent fear.
The son’s frightened demeanor enrages the father, who cannot bear to see in his son the
emotion that he denies. He tells him in a saccharine voice that he will help his son learn to be
“friends” with the cold. He bundles the boy up in warm clothes, sends him outdoors into the
blizzard, and bolts the door behind him. Hours later, now night, the child is still outdoors,
compulsively polishing the snow he has tamped down to a mirrored surface, kissing the snow,
oblivious to the fact that the skin of his lips is sticking to the ice. The child has disowned his fear
of the cold so totally that he can neither respond to sensations of cold nor pain. Trapped by his
father’s disavowal of fear, the boy cannot register the danger he is in.
This passage vividly portrays the rapidity with which projective identification can be
enacted between family members, the degree to which it operates out of conscious awareness,
and the relational work children do in an effort to repair the experiences suffered by their
parents. Although this example is fictional, it alerts us to the unique ways that repair can occur—
befriending the snow and the cold—reminding us of the convoluted paths that symbolic
representation may take. Further, it cautions us against being too literal in imagining what
Familial Mechanisms
Family life provides an infinite variety of ways for members to go about their business
and interact. Solitary activities coexist with social ones, private space and time press up against
public ones, family members know more than they are told, intuit more than they see, and
next. We are accustomed to think of silence as an absence of sound, but it functions in families in
much more complex and confusing ways (Danieli, 1998b, 1998c). Silence can communicate a
wealth of meanings. It is its own map: Don’t go there; don’t say that; don’t touch; too much; too
little; this hurts; this doesn’t. But why the territory is as it is cannot be read from the map of
silence.
Sometimes silence is total, sometimes it is pocked with speech. Often parents who have
suffered political violence cannot bring themselves—or may be unable—to tell a sequential
narrative of the ordeal. Children in families in which speechlessness dominates and few facts
have been disclosed may fantasize details to imagine the parental trauma (Ancharoff, Munroe, &
Fisher, 1998; Weingarten, 2003). In families in which detail has been blurted out, often with
incongruous affect, silence may follow disclosure, like waves overtaking castles in the sand.
Parents who have suffered from experiences related to political violence know that the
world can be a dangerous place. Depending on the experiences they have had, they may also
believe that humans are capable of sadistic or indifferent cruelty. Fundamental assumptions
about the world may have been shattered.Janoff-Bulman (1992) proposes that trauma shatters
three fundamental assumptions about the world and the self: 1. the world is benevolent, 2. the
world is meaningful, and 3. the self is worthy. I agree that the shattering of fundamental
assumptions about the world and the self is a psychological sequela of trauma, but doubt that
there are universally held assumptions that shatter. In my clinical experience, first, many people
have never held these beliefs before a trauma and second, the assumption that has been shattered
is often connected to unique personal circumstances and cannot be stated as a grand, abstract
proposition. A parental imperative is to keep one’s children from harm. Warning children about
danger is a primary means of safeguarding them. However, when the warnings themselves terrify
Parents often unconsciously strike a compromise, using one “channel” to tell and one to
conceal. They may not literally tell an anecdote, but symbolically communicate the message in
other ways (see Spiegelman, 1986, 1991). Or the parent may have decided not to speak about
experiences but rather responses to stimuli that remind him or her of the experience may provide
a “map” to what he or she has suffered (Ancharoff et al., 1998). One client’s mother was on the
kindertransport, which saved mainly Jewish children from death in concentration camps during
World War II by sending them to Great Britain. The client’s mother arrived abroad at age 6
without either parent and was fostered by a Protestant family. The mother never directly told her
daughter a sequential narrative of her memories of her years with this family. Instead, she would
telegraph information to the daughter in situations that she could only imagine were evocative.
For instance, her mother would withdraw into an icy coldness when her daughter would disagree
with her, telling her she had no idea how lucky she was to have a mother at all. Or, she would be
dismissive about cards the daughter produced in school for Mother’s Day, speaking sarcastically
This kind of communication, messages with multiple, embedded meanings, is of the sort
that family therapists are adept at deconstructing with families. Family therapists can assist
families with gaining greater conscious control over the meanings they communicate
Societal Mechanisms
Silence plays a crucial role in passing trauma from one generation to the next. This is the
case whether it is the silence left in the wake of dissociation, the silence imposed by implicit or
explicit family rules, or the silence shared by communities of people overwhelmed by the task of
facing what political violence has wrought. Silence operates at the individual, family, and
national level, often in an interlinked fashion such that the silence at one level takes on additional
As has been discussed, silence is multifaceted and co-occurs with numbers of other
phenomena. Shame, a painful affect in which one feels exposed as “fundamentally deficient in
some vital way as a human being,” (Kaufman, 1992, p.96) is one of them. As with silence, shame
exists at the individual, family, and national level. If silence incubates fear, shame incubates
violence, often retaliatory violence (Gilligan, 1997). Shame, thus, also plays a role in the
called humiliation, as central to the ways that trauma passes collectively from members of one
generation to the next (Lindner, 2001a, 2001b; Volkan, 1997, 1999, 2000). Although humiliation
is enacted and experienced by individuals, it is built into the structure of social relations and
institutions. Persons or groups who are humiliated are meant to feel put down or taken down, in
line with the root meaning of the word as humus or earth, to be degraded (Lindner, 2001a). In
those societies in which preserving the dignity of all persons is felt to be essential, humiliation
can take on traumatic dimensions, not just at the level of individual persons but of the group as a
Thus humiliation and trauma can become linked at the individual and group identity
levels. A recent caption for a triptych of photographs of a large statue in Baghdad of Saddam
Hussein being pulled down by American Marines reads “About Face” (New York Times, 2003).
The caption succinctly captures the interpretation of this event by many in the Arab world. Talal
Salman, the publisher of a respected newspaper in Beirut, wrote in a front-page editorial, “What
a tragedy again plaguing the great people of Iraq. They have to choose between the night of
tyranny and the night of humiliation stemming from foreign occupation” (MacFarquhar, 2003).
When whole groups are humiliated and must swallow their resentment, the desire for
revenge builds. Children who see, know, or intuit that their parents or grandparents have been
humiliated are particularly vulnerable to developing retaliatory fantasies. When one generation
fails to restore social and political equality, this failure forms the next generation’s legacy.
Volkan (20017) has identified the concept of “chosen trauma” to account for the
traumatic past event during which the large group suffered loss and/or
prestige, and indicates the large group’s failure to reverse . . . humiliation inflicted
by another large group, usually a neighbor, but in some cases, between ethnic or
By “chosen” Volkan (2001)8 is not implying that the group consciously desires to take on
traumatic experiences, but rather that out of the multitude of traumas that groups have suffered,
one is selected and the meanings attached to it are passed on to succeeding generations. Apprey
(1999) and Scott (2000) have applied Volkan’s model to the situation of African Americans, in
which the legacy of slavery is passed unconsciously from one generation to the next but
intersects with the conscious knowledge of current discrimination and racism. Unconsciously
burdened by the expectation and hope that they can redeem the history of brutal violence, the
authors believe that African-American children are confronted by powerlessness in their current
circumstances. They perceive the need to reverse the humiliation, but are blocked from doing so.
In addition, processes of mourning that are essential for repair of losses in the previous
generations provide no relief: all life is loss (Apprey, 1999; Scott, 2000). Thus societal
Clinical Vignettes
not so that we can identify which mechanism may be operating for which child in a family, nor
so that we can understand exactly how the trauma of political violence is transmitted in a family.
Rather, the purpose of gaining familiarity is to ground us solidly in the knowledge that
our clients, we can incorporate this domain into our inquiry about their lives. Whether we are
working with the children themselves or the parents who talk to us about their children,
understanding the role of the child as witness to the effects of political violence provides avenues
for understanding and change. Consistent with this point of view, the clinical examples that
follow illustrate the general thesis, rather than a particular mechanism of transmission.
Situation one. In reviewing clinical notes for this article, I recalled working in the late
1970s with Mara, a 20-year-old Chinese American, at a time when I did not have a systematic
violence. Nonetheless, the work was consistent with the clinical perspective elucidated in this
paper. Mara had been referred by her university health service with a presenting problem of
In the first session she informed me that her parents were “anti-Mao” and had escaped
China in 1948. Her father, but not her mother, had found work in the United States appropriate to
his Chinese education and training. Although her parents were forthcoming about the histories of
their families in China, neither would tell Mara how they met. We soon realized that this had
become an obsession for her. Mara would ask her mother if she loved her father; her mother
would say, “I don’t know.” Mara reported that sometime between the ages of 10 and 12, when
she would wake in the night and get a glass of water, she could hear her mother tell her father
In therapy, Mara realized that her bulimia was an embodied symbolic expression of her
fantasy of her mother’s story, which she believed was one of loss and compromise. The bulimia
kept her thin, closer to her mother’s expectation of how a Chinese woman should look, but
achieved in a manner that was shameful to her and to her parents. The bulimia led her to date but
then reject men, for fear that they would discover her eating disorder. She thus enacted what she
unconsciously believed was her mother’s situation with her father: A marriage forced by political
exigencies that her mother protested by keeping her father at arm’s length. Finally, the bulimia
sapped her energy both physically and psychologically, leading to an inconsistent academic
performance. This too was a complex expression of loyalty, honoring her parents’ wish for her to
succeed, but always on the brink of “losing everything.” In this way, she allied herself with the
professional limits that forced immigration had caused her mother. As she made connections
between the bulimia and what she had witnessed and imagined, she gained more options.
Situation two. Faraz and Leila, a middle-aged Iranian couple who had each left Iran for
political reasons in the late 1970s with most of their families, had met and married in the United
States. They consulted me about long-standing marital conflict, which they feared was “making
our son nervous.” Their son, age12, complained of frequent stomachaches and he isolated
himself from his peers at his public school, while playing well with the children of his parents’
expatriot friends. Although the couple had prospered economically and professionally in the
In therapy, I suggested that they tell me not only about their current lives, but also about
what they had imagined their adult lives were going to be like. This unleashed a torrent of rage,
grief, and bitterness. They contrasted the life they would have lived in Iran—a life of privilege,
status, and power—with the ways they felt discriminated against by Americans. At the same
They had told their son almost nothing about the context of their leaving Iran. We
discussed the possibility that in the absence of having been told, he had created a story to fit what
he imagined to have been the circumstances. Could this “story” be one he lived out himself in his
own life? Had he imagined his parents betrayed by one group of people and, now, he was
Uncomfortable talking directly to their son, Faraz and Leila agreed to “pepper” their
normal conversation with facts about the politics of the time just before they left Iran and their
experiences during this time. In a few months, the couple’s relationship was less conflictual and
their son complained of fewer stomachaches. Coincident with his transition to middle-school,
about 6 months into his parents’ therapy, he joined two student groups and invited a new friend
home.
Situation three. A former colleague of mine consulted with me about her family when
both of her adolescent children were “acting out.” At the same time, her husband, a Vietnam
veteran, was acting more and more withdrawn, a process that she told me had started in 1991
during the Gulf War. Upon further questioning, I learned that her husband was too anxious to do
much parenting, relying on his wife to manage their children. When he did intervene, she said,
his attitude was catastrophizing, his approach draconian. With her permission, I gave her a
summary of the ideas I have presented in this article, suggesting that they might be of some use
to her.
Follow-up 1 year later revealed that her husband has started pharmacological and
psychotherapeutic treatment at a Veteran’s Center; the family had been seen in counseling; and
both children were doing better. My colleague told me that simply naming the possibility that the
children had been affected by their father’s unprocessed feelings about his war-time experiences
had been relieving and clarifying to them, starting a process of healing in their family.
Situation four. Leslie had worked with me in therapy to relieve symptoms of intrusion
related to her mother’s death from cancer. Her older child, a daughter who was conceived shortly
after her grandmother’s death, was 6 years old when Leslie originally came into therapy. She
found her difficult to handle and described them both as prone to “temper tantrums.” Leslie
worked successfully on her traumatic grief and on her parenting, ending her therapy feeling
About 1 month after the start of the War in Iraq, Leslie consulted with me about her
younger child, Sam, a 7-year-old boy. Her decision to seek consultation was prompted by her
positive experience in therapy, not worry about the severity of the child’s symptoms. She
reported that Sam was “overly focused on death and suffering.” Since the start of the war, he had
been biting his nails, twisting his hair compulsively, complaining of stomachaches and waking
up with the nightmares. Leslie believed that Sam was sensitized to these issues because of her
She and her husband avoided discussing the war in front of him, never listened to news in
his presence and quickly put the newspaper in a bin after reading it out of Sam’s view.
Nonetheless Sam was relentless with his questions. “How can we help the people if we are
killing them?” was a typical question of his. “I may have to lie to protect him,” Leslie said.
Approach to Interventions
Leslie’s response to Sam is prototypical. Parents wish to protect their children from the
horrors that exist in the world. When those horrors are ones that people inflict on each other, the
urge to shield children from knowing about this is even greater. However, the wisdom of the
ages, whether literary or clinical, encourages us to resist the temptation to conceal and instead
For a clinician then, the task is to create a safe context for whomever he or she is working
with to begin to describe and later to integrate the political dimensions into the narrative of the
person or family’s life. This narrative always has at least three aspects: The story of the political
violence itself; the story of the effects on the parent or parents; and the impact on the child,
regardless of age. It is important for the clinician to have in mind that the impact usually confers
both vulnerabilities and strengths to the child (Novac & Hubert-Schneider, 1998; Rousseau,
Drapeau, & Platt, 1999). Greenspan (2003), a noted feminist psychotherapist and author, whose
parents were both Holocaust survivors, has written about her mission to comfort her parents and
the gift that came from this: “In the inarticulate heart-centered way that children know things, I
knew that emotional pain had a story to tell that needed to be heard. And I knew that, from
Awareness alone, however, does not bring relief. Referring back to the witness positions,
we can see that awareness must be coupled with empowerment. In the session with Leslie,
having drawn her a sketch of the witness position grid and discussed the concepts with her, she
succinctly summarized her situation: “I’ve been trying to make Sam unaware and it doesn’t
For Sam, the way to “move him up” included activities that would make him feel that he
was part of a peace movement—making anti-war signs, a peace button—and activities that
would allow him to express his anger and fear—kicking a soccer ball that he named Osama Bin
Laden’s head. Leslie and I discussed that empowerment might also come from her
acknowledging and appreciating qualities of his that led him to worry about the suffering of
others.
For adults and children, doing something that either changes that which we are aware of
or changes a proxy of it is helpful and may feel empowering (Weingarten, 2003). Although the
“doing” may be symbolic or literal, it is especially helpful when the doing permits a “physical
experience of efficacy and purpose” (van der Kolk, 2002, p. 381), when it is in solidarity with
others who are actually or imaginatively present, and when the news about the activity can be
circulated to others who might understand, appreciate, or validate the action (Madigan & Epston,
Sometimes remembering and grief are the most challenging and courageous responses to
legacies of political violence (Bar-On, 1989, 1995, 1996; Botcharova, 2001; Green, 2000;
Shahini, 2001; Thomson, 2000). Clinicians can help clients understand that mourning the pain
and losses suffered by the previous generations is a major contribution to acknowledging the past
Clinicians have a crucial role to play in helping people to make sense of the ways that
political violence seeps in and affects their lives. Understanding that children can be witnesses to
the effects of political violence on their parents and that parental trauma can pass to children is
an important competency for family therapists. In providing a safe and knowledgeable
witnesses to those who learn to become aware and empowered witnesses to their loved ones
(Weingarten, 2003).
CODA
In this article, I have focused on the ways that the effects of parental political violence
impact children, that is, how politics impacts the domestic. In closing, I want to provide a
contrasting example, to show the inherent circularity of these effects and the impossibility of
Fred Marchant (2000) is a Boston poet whose work traverses the domestic and political
realms. His second book of poetry, Full Moon Boat, opens with a stunning evocation of the
political ramifications of lessons learned in the domestic realm. A Marine officer during the
Vietnam War, stationed in Okinawa, he became one of the first Marine officers ever to be
1970, he writes, “the creases/ of deep, dried-out arroyos remind me/of the pack that belonged to
the soldier/who hung over my childhood sleep/and taught me, before I ever understood/ a word
like puttee, how good it would feel/ to take a helmet off, to set a weapon down.”10p.4.
He is referring to an etching, “The Return,” that hung in his room, of a soldier from the
First World War, kneeling before a crucifix, with a helmet and rifle on the floor, “his calves
wrapped with puttees, his head/ half-hidden by a bulging cinched-up knapsack.” P.3. Later in
the book, we learn that Marchant’s journey from war to conscientious objection is connected to
lessons he learned at home. His poem, “African Violets,” paints the past with the indelible detail
elements in the charged scene. As his mother tells him about her beatings, with “tears that
seemed to ooze,” p.19 he studies the petals of an African violet, the “deep purple petals/and
bright yellow eyes at the heart” p.20 and he hears “whenever/a car slows and sounds as if it will
stop,” p.20 as if this attention at the periphery will dilute the power of the poignant encounter
He writes that he was “pure listening in training,” p.19 although he sat “as far away from
her” p. 19 as he could, absorbing lessons “no matter how much they hurt.” P.20 In his case, the
lessons are ones about “the nature of love:/ never swear at a woman, never raise my hand.” P.19
It must have been monumental in Okinawa to realize that the lesson he had learned in his living
REFERENCES
Ancharoff, M. R., Munroe, J. F., & Fisher, L. M. (1998.) The legacy of combat trauma: Clinical
Press.
Apfel, R. J., & Simon, B. (Eds.). (1996) Minefields in their hearts: The mental health of children
in war and communal violence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Apprey, M. (1999.) Reinventing the self in the face of received transgenerational hatred in the
Auerhahn, N. C., & Laub, D. (1998) Intergenerational memory of the Holocaust. In Y. Danieli
Bar-On, D. (1989) Legacy of silence: Encounters with children of the Third Reich. Cambridge,
Bar-On, D. (1995) Fear and hope: Three generations of the Holocaust. Cambridge, MA:
(Eds.), Minefields in their hearts: The mental health of children in war and communal
Buka, S. L., Stichick, T. L., Birdthistle, I, & Earls, F. J. (2001). Youth exposure to violence:
Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (1999). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical
Plenum Press.
Plenum Press.
Press.
Egeland, B., & Susman-Stillman, A. (1996). Dissociation as a mediator of child abuse across
Felman, S., & Laub, D. (1992). Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis,
Figley, C. R. (1995). Compassion fatigue: Coping with secondary traumatic stress disorder in
11, 303–314.
9(1), 5–9.
Gilligan, J. (1997). Violence: Reflections on a national epidemic. New York: Vintage Books.
http://www.karunacenter.org/article-aninfusion.html
Greenspan, M. (2003). Healing through the dark emotions: The wisdom of grief, fear, and
Grossman, D. (1996). On killing: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society.
Groves, B. M. (2002). Children who see too much: Lessons from the child witness to violence
Hackett, J. (2001). The territory of trauma: A novelist finds herself in unexpected historical
territory, confronting the ethics and politics of her art. Boston Review (December 2001–
Plenum Press.
Hatley, J. (2000). Suffering witness: The quandary of responsibility after the irreparable.
Jensen, P. S., & Shaw, J. (1993). Children as victims of war: Current knowledge and future
research needs. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,
32, 697–708.
Kaufman, G. (1992). Shame: The power of caring. Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books.
Kaufman, J., & Zigler, E. (1987). Do abused children become abusive parents? American
research literature. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences, 38, 36–46.
Kindlon, D., & Thompson, M. (1999). Raising Cain: Protecting the emotional life of boys.
Kinzie, J. D., Boehnlein, J., & Sack, W. H. (1998). The effects of massive trauma on Cambodian
Langer, L. L. (1991). Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Laub, D. (1991). Truth and testimony: The process and the struggle. American Imago, 48, 75–91.
Leavitt, L. A., & Fox, N. A. (Eds.). (1993). The psychological effects of war and violence on
Review, 2, 46–63.
Levant, R. F., & Pollack, W. S. (1995). A new psychology of men. New York: Basic Books.
Lynch, M., & Cicchetti, D. (2002). Links between community violence and the family system:
Lyons-Ruth, K., & Jacobvitz, D. (1999). Attachment disorganization: Unresolved loss, relational
violence, and lapses in behavioral and attentional strategies. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver
(Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 520–
Machel, G., & UNICEF. (1996). Impact of armed conflict on children. New York: United
Nations.
Machel, G., Salgado, S., Klot, J. F., Sowa, T. & UNICEF. (2001). The impact of war on
children: A review of progress since the 1996 United Nations report on the impact of
MacFarquhar, N. (2003). April 13. Humiliation and rage stalk the Arab world. The New York
Times,1.
Madigan, S., & Epston, A. (1995). From "spy-chiatric gaze" to communities of concern: From
Collaborative practice in family therapy (pp. 257–276). New York: Guilford Press.
Marchant, F. (2000). Full moon boat: Poems. Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press.
Mason, J. W., Wang, S., Yehuda, R., Riney, S., Charney, D. S., & Southwick, S. M. (2001).
Mason, J. W., Wang, S., Yehuda, R., Lubin, H., Johnson, D., Bremner, J. D., Charney, D., &
Stress, 3, 131–149.
Metzger, D. (2000). The other hand. Los Angeles, CA: Red Hen Press.
Mollica, R. F., Poole, C., & Tor, S. (1998). Symptoms, functioning, and health problems in a
Dohrenwend (Ed.), Adversity, stress, and psychopathology (pp. 34–51). Oxford, UK:
Nelson, T. S., Heilbrun, G., & C. R. Figley. (1993). Basic family therapy skills: IV.
Transgenerational theories of family therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 19,
253–266.
11
Novac, A., & Hubert-Schneider, S. (1998). Acquired vulnerability: Comorbidity in a patient
Press.
Pearlman, L. A., & Saakvitne, K. W. (1995). Trauma and the therapist: Countertransference and
vicarious traumatization in psychotherapy with incest survivors (1st ed.). New York:
Norton.
Pollack, W. S. (1999). Real boys: Rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. New York: Owl
Books.
Punamaeki, R. -L., Qouta, S., & El-Sarraj, E. (2001). Resiliency factors predicting psychological
Reilly, I. (2002). Trauma and family therapy: Reflections on September 11 from Northern
Rousseau, C., Drapeau, A., & Platt, R. (1999). Family trauma and its association with emotional
and behavioral problems and social adjustment in adolescent Cambodian refugees. Child
Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J., Pott, M., Miyake, K., & Morelli, G. (1993). Attachment and culture:
Security in the United States and Japan. American Psychologist, 55, 1093–1104.
11
AU: Spelling is different in text. Please clarify.
Rowland-Klein, D., & Dunlop, R. (1998). The transmission of trauma across generations:
transmission of trauma within the African American community. Mind and Human
Selner-O'Hagan, M. B., Kindlon, D. J., Buka, S. L., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. J. (1998).
Shahini, M. (2001). Therapy, tradition, and myself. AACAP News, 32, 181–182.
Simpson, M. A. (1998). The second bullet: Transgenerational impacts of the trauma of conflict
within a South African and world context. In Y. Danieli (Ed.), International handbook of
Solkoff, N. (1992). Children of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust: A critical review of the
Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the pain of others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Spiegelman, A. (1986). Maus: A survivor's tale: My father bleeds history. New York: Pantheon
Books.
Spiegelman, A. (1991). Maus II: A survivor's tale: and here my troubles began (1st ed.). New
Steinman, L. (2001). The souvenir: A daughter discovers her father's war (1st ed.). Chapel Hill,
Thomson, J. A. (2000). Terror, tears, and timelessness: Individual and group responses to
van der Kolk, B. A. (1996). The body keeps score: Approaches to the psychobiology of
Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society (pp.
van der Kolk, B. A. (1999). The body keeps the score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology
van der Kolk, B. A. (2002). Posttraumatic therapy in the age of neuroscience. Psychoanalytic
Volkan, V. D. (1997). Bloodlines: From ethnic pride to ethnic terrorism (1st ed.). New York:
diplomacy and the reduction of ethnic tension. Mind and Human Interaction, 10, 142–
210.
Volkan, V. D. (2000). Traumatized societies and psychological care: Expanding the concept of
Washington Post Online. Mandela: The Struggle. Retrieved April 11, 2003, from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/galleries/mandela/part2.htm
Weingarten, K. (2000). Witnessing, wonder, and hope. Family Process, 39, 389–402.
Weingarten, K. (2003). Common shock: Witnessing violence every day: How we are harmed,
Weingarten, K., & Worthen, M. E. (1997). A narrative approach to understanding the illness
experiences of a mother and daughter. Families, Systems and Health, 15, 41–54.
Weiss, M., & Weiss, S. (2000). Second generation to Holocaust survivors: Enhanced
Compassion fatigue: Coping with secondary traumatic stress disorder in those who treat
Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel.
Yehuda, R. (2002). Post-traumatic stress disorder. New England Journal of Medicine, 346, 108–
114.
Yehuda, R., Halligan, S. L., & Grossman, R. (2001). Childhood trauma and risk for PTSD:
Yehuda, R., Halligan, S. L., & Bierer, L. M. (2002). Cortisol levels in adult offspring of
Holocaust survivors: Relation to PTSD symptom severity in the parent and child.
• Family
Aware Unaware
Empowered 1 2
• Community
Disempowered 4 3
• Society